It’s embarrassing, but I spent years of college in “design lab” before realizing that these classes were supposed to be set up like laboratories. Were we quasi-scientists? Did we experiment? Maybe. We certainly built mountains of bizarre models and amassed stacks of sketches outlining our architectural conjecture. But I think what we didn’t do very vigorously was test the ideas we came up with in lab. And how do you even go about testing an architecture model? When I came across this video about the MIT school of architecture (and the folks teaching there) it occurred to me how intensively the school is testing novel architectural ideas. From concrete foam to interactive robotic facades– the school has a plethora of fascinating projects, faculty and students. This short video introduces you to a few of the architectural experiments occurring there.

The video, itself, is also great. It was put together by Stebs at Paper Fortress. He has several other videos, and if architecture school has driven you to drink, you might enjoy a video he put together about the making of a whiskey barrel.